


The Winter Men

by AngelGirl4212



Category: Original Work
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2020-12-28
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:02:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28387449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngelGirl4212/pseuds/AngelGirl4212
Summary: Robert Perkins, Bob to his friends and Bobby to his mother, only disappeared because he stopped smoking cigarettes inside the house.





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This was written as a writing challenge. It was never meant for publication. However, I would like some comments on this as it was my first attempt at an original novel. I am thinking of writing another one but I want to know what people think.

**R** obert Perkins, Bob to his friends and Bobby to his mother, only disappeared because he stopped smoking cigarettes inside the house.

Robert Perkins Sr was a drunk. He lost his sense of responsibility when Bob was still a baby. Days were spent staring at the bottom of a shot glass and nights were spent holding screaming matches with his wife. This is important only because once, after a particularly inspired drinking match, Rob knocked the crib over, spilling Bobby out onto the cheap stained carpeting and while the baby was screaming, Rob beat the ever-loving shit out of Linda and called her a whore. After he spit in her face, blacked both her eyes and spent the rest of the night alternating between curses and great big sloppy sobs of apologies, Linda Perkins picked up the baby and packed up her suitcase.

Bob, of course, doesn’t remember any of this.

Bob does remember his mother picking him up one day after school, when he was still young enough to need picking up. Linda had pulled his coat on roughly, jamming hands through sleeves rather than guiding. The zipper caught his chin and all she said about it was, “You even have his damn eyes.”

Bobby started to cry, “I do not!”

“You do and there’s no point crying about it,” Linda grabbed his arm and started to walk quickly toward home. “You know how I feel about you crying all the time. You need to start manning up, Bobby. I mean it. Stiff upper lip.”

That was one of Linda’s favourite expressions: stiff upper lip. If the lip wasn’t stiff enough for the occasion, you were liable to end up with a red cheek or bruised chin. Bobby had willed himself to stop the tears from falling.

“I just don’t like him. I’m not like him and stuff.”

“You don’t like him because you don’t remember him. If we had stayed you’d be an asshole just like him. Now quiet. I don’t want to hear you anymore.”

And so the resolution began: don’t be an asshole. The “like your father” was implied. And he tried not to be one. Bob Perkins didn’t drink, didn’t smoke the wacky tabacky and when he fell in love, he married her.

They lived in a two-bedroom fixer-upper. And they were happy.

That’s why no one thought Bob really would have bailed. There were whispers and rumours and, people being people, there was the usual speculation: there were fabricated affairs and criminals. Bob must have run off and the marriage must’ve been on the rocks after all. And most of all, there were whispers about Edna. The “poor thing” that was about to have a baby and was now about to have it alone.

But the truth was a little harder to believe than the rumour mill. No one saw much other than Bob smoking on the front porch. That happened almost nightly as the smoke bothered Edna. But if a man has to have a vice, well, Edna wasn’t complaining. He didn’t have to quit, she had said, just not in the house.

So it was usual to see Bob pacing on the front porch, the glow from the cigarette tip visible even from across the street. He was bundled up to fight the cold. Edna had knitted him a scarf and it was bunched around his neck. His hat had ear flaps and they were down. The cigarette glow and the smoke and the white puffs of air from his breath were all visible. Bob Perkins was not. And then the snow had started falling in big, fat flakes and that was the last time that Bob Perkins had been seen by anyone in the neighbourhood.

Edna had put the kettle on to boil in the kitchen and took two mugs down from the cupboard. When the scream of the kettle didn’t bring in Bob, she opened the front door to call him.

Truth be told, she had just missed him.

“I should quit,” he said to himself as he flicked the spent cigarette off the porch. It landed in the snow, but the tiny hollow it left filled almost immediately with fresh snow.

He was lighting another cigarette, cupping his hand around to the tip to shelter it from the weather until the flame can take hold, when he heard the voices. It was the fact that other people were outside that really got his attention and, despite the shit weather, he stopped pacing to keep warm in favour of actively trying to eavesdrop.

One voice was a child’s. The other voice was deeper, like an adult’s, and difficult to understand over the distance and the wind.

“I want to go home now. It’s too cold to be out anyway. Mister? Did you hear me? I said I want to go home!”

It was then that Bob left the porch to follow. The cigarette abandoned in favour of keeping his face from the wind, he walked until he saw them. Not far from home. Two shapes, dark in front of an empty park. One tiny – made to look bigger from the bulk of a snowsuit. The other shape was tall, but through some trick of light and snow, less _solid_ seeming than the child. Bob was close enough to notice that the adult wasn’t wearing boots or gloves. Just seemingly wearing a long, dark coat. He was hard to see and seemingly blurred in the dark.

“We can’t play in the park anyway,” the kid was saying now. “I want to go home now.”

“Home?” The words sound like a hiss, “We are going home, child.”

The man shape sniffed. The sound sharp and sudden, it cut through the night silence. The sound was enough to send the first shiver of fear through Bob. And Bob’s fear made things sharp for him – details that he didn’t notice before. Like the man’s too-long face and the odd animalistic sharpness of the facial bones. The _Thing_ grinned and revealed another horror – the sharp points of teeth.

And when it grinned – the thin, ripping sound of flesh.

Bob screamed. It was a weak, fearful scream that wasn’t loud enough to be noticed over the howling wind and the sudden heavy snowfall. He screamed, but grabbed for the child’s shape. Even through his own fear, sick as it was making him feel, he thought of the kid. Thought of bringing the kid home, Edna making the kid some hot chocolate or something and then the wait in the living room for the kid’s parents after just finding out the boy’s damn name….

Overly long arms grabbed Bob’s forearms and began to pull him close. Bob’s feet dragged through snow. He didn’t help, he didn’t actively resist. He couldn’t _move_ and the arms wrapped around his chest. The tracks he had left were covered quickly behind him as the Man-Thing grasped him. For the first time, Bob thought of his death. As the world had greyed out around him, Bob Perkins wondered in a slow, idle fashion – the fear made his thoughts sluggish and stupid – if this was what death felt like.

And he thought of Edna. Edna who opened the front door to call him in.

The snow had settled in a thick white blanket. There were no footprints on the porch steps anymore and no sign of footprints on the lawn or the sidewalk. Not a single footprint anywhere to point in Bob’s direction.

The police came.

The police left.

Tears didn’t bring him back. And Edna Perkins gave birth alone. He was a little early, but he was healthy. Edna was thankful.


	2. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Megan Smith worked at a store called Penny Books. Penny Books specialized in providing reading customers with cheap reading material. The shelves were overloaded with books and the books were crammed in as much as possible without causing damage. There was a slight organization to them: they were grouped by genre and then loosely, quite loosely, by author’s last name. The organization gave the store away as being a second hand shop even if lack of cellophane and the over-abundance of dust on the tops of books and the exposed areas of shelf managed to escape the customer’s notice. Megan was not the owner of the shop and, in fact, was very much fed up with her state of employment. At the moment, this emotion expressed itself as pressed lips making for a very thin mouth and a slight air of exasperation. Other than that, she was a very average looking woman in a very messy looking shop.

**M** egan Smith worked at a store called Penny Books. Penny Books specialized in providing reading customers with cheap reading material. The shelves were overloaded with books and the books were crammed in as much as possible without causing damage. There was a slight organization to them: they were grouped by genre and then loosely, quite loosely, by author’s last name. The organization gave the store away as being a second hand shop even if lack of cellophane and the over-abundance of dust on the tops of books and the exposed areas of shelf managed to escape the customer’s notice. Megan was not the owner of the shop and, in fact, was very much fed up with her state of employment. At the moment, this emotion expressed itself as pressed lips making for a very thin mouth and a slight air of exasperation. Other than that, she was a very average looking woman in a very messy looking shop.

The other person manning the shop was a short younger woman with bright pink hair. Although lacking the same exasperated air, she was clearly bored. She was not the owner either so she was ineffectively swiping at the shelf dust with a small rag. The rag had seen better days. It had a couple of small holes in it and was quite faded from wash and wear. At one point it had sported a bright floral pattern, but from a distance it looked white. The flowers were still there, but very difficult to make out in spots.

There were no customers in the store. This fact alone counted for the boredom of one woman and the general air of dissatisfaction around the other.

“It’s your birthday today, huh?” Claire gave up the pretense of dusting and tried instead to fill the day with small talk.

“Yeah, but I’m not doing anything. When you get older, birthdays don’t mean as much anymore.”

The rest of Megan’s birthday passed in much the same way. The occasional regular customer sent birthday wishes. Facebook, of course, was loaded with them. But Megan’s birthday remained a quiet affair. This was by choice. Megan was a hard worker and tried her best to be a decent person, but she was quietly quite sure she was losing her mind.

The dreams had started suddenly. They now came regularly and stayed the same in every way. It always started with her walking. It was a pretty street with rows of houses on both sides. They were all very tidy, well kept houses. The streets were tree lined as well. Everything was well maintained and there was even the occasional flower garden, bursting with colour. Looking at the houses, she felt an overwhelming desire to live in one of them. To have one of those beautiful gardens and one of those neatly trimmed lawns.

She walked. Megan walked until she was hit by the fact that no neighbourhood should be this _silent_. There were no noises. No sounds at all. No birds. No kids. Despite the beautiful façade, the houses were dead.

That was when the dream started to scare her. The walk became faster. And by the time she can see the end of the street, she was almost at a full run. It made sense in the way that dreams do, that if she reached the end of the street, the terror would be over. She would see cars and there would be brown grass, weeds and noise. But she never gets to the end of the street. As soon as she becomes aware of freedom, she always hears her name. She never wants to, but she always stops to look behind.

He was only a few feet away. He was strong looking. The only other sign of life and he was another terror. His build was a thick, solid one and, despite the distance, his height was clear. He could do damage to her.

“Megan,” his voice came clearly. He wasn’t yelling, but it carried easily.

Megan shivered with fear and sudden cold.

“Run,” he said.

And she did. She ran until the dream was over and she woke up. The dream was exhausting. The dream was also irritating in its sameness.

“Earth to Megan,” Claire was laughing as she spoke. “You’re really out of it today.”

Since Megan didn’t feel like agreeing to the obvious, she handed Claire the phone. It was their signal for a break. In this case it was a smoke break. A smoke break to clear her damn head.

The air outside was cold and she instantly regretted not grabbing her coat on the way out. Her breath was clearly visible and her teeth were chattering, but the air felt fresh had worked to rid her mind of the sluggish feeling that she had been fighting. She didn’t bother lighting a cigarette. The air alone was helping. She stayed by the back door, knowing that it was warmer just on the other side of it helped. The back door was cold. Being a grey metal door that opened into a small (and empty) parking lot, neither the colour nor the material of the door made it particularly inviting. Megan was very aware of the frigid temperature, made readily apparent by the small white flurries around her, and the lonely nature of the parking lot itself. It was going to be a long day if there wasn’t a customer soon.

Then she heard her name.

It was so faint that she was sure it was imagination. Something left over from those stupid dreams carried over into her real working life.

“Megan?”

Her body tensed. Her mind screamed: _this wasn’t happening!_ Despite the cold, she could feel the sweat start to dampen under the under arm area of her sweater. Panicked, she fumbled with the door behind her and felt it give. Once she was safe in the storage room, the laughter - or more accurate, slightly hysterical giggling – bubbled out of her. The giggles released the fear and tension. Once that was over, she realized that was, in fact, an over-imaginative idiot and went back to the store front.

By the time that she took the work phone from Claire she had convinced herself of two facts. One, she did hear her name. Her overactive imagination had clearly done the rest. Her stupid imagination had turned the simple call of another very real person into something sinister. Two, it was probably a customer. Some regular was walking by and thought to greet her before going into the actual store. Many of the regulars knew her by name. Many of them would stop to talk to her if they saw her elsewhere anyway. Why wouldn’t someone stop to talk to her if she was spotted just outside the store?

There were still no customers in the store.

The incident was almost forgotten. After a whole two weeks passed with only the dream and without any unsettling bleed over into her waking life, Megan had, as a result, let her guard down. And as with all routine, the dream had moved from frightening to annoying and now it was only regarded as something that was. The dream was expected and so it was experienced and promptly disregarded.

Besides, Megan had other things to occupy her mind with. The coming of winter meant the coming of Christmas and books could be gifted. The shop still had all of its untidy charm, only now Christmas lights decorated the window front and a wreath hung from the door. True that the lights were cheap and likely a fire hazard and true that the wreath was home made and nailed quite haphazardly, however, coupled with the carols on the radio, the store had taken on a thoroughly festive feel. Megan was in the process of locking the store’s front door. It was dark and cold and she was tired. It had been a long day for her and for Penny Books.

Then she saw the man again.

First it was just a flash of movement somewhere to her left, seen only through her peripheral vision. Then he was undeniably _there._ She could see every detail of him, from the solid, muscular build of his body to the hint of red flannel shirt that poked out of collar of his dark winter coat. As soon as she noticed him, Megan couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her. His sudden presence was a shock to her and in this shock she dropped her keys in the snow at her feet, the big plastic leaf that was the key chain left a deep hole in the snow. She locked eyes with this man, her tormentor, and frozen in this state, she neither moved to get away from him nor moved to retrieve her keys.

“Don’t run,” his hands were palm up to show that they were empty.

The gesture, of course, was the universal sign for proclaiming the nonthreatening nature of the person who made it. However, his hands, like the rest of his, were large. They were solid, muscular hands. Despite his words, chosen to reassure, his build gave him the appearance of danger. Megan had no doubt in her mind that he could hurt with those hands and she whimpered. The noise was low and involuntary. Under another set of circumstances, this would leave her red in the face and embarrassed, now though, she was only frightened. The fear was everywhere, even in the odd taste that filled her mouth. She couldn’t help it when she whimpered again and, irrational in the grip of her fear, cowered in the doorway of the closed store. The door was locked and the keys still in the snow, the doorway could do nothing to help her.

And he advanced. He moved slowly. His eyes fixed on her and his hands stayed visible. He walked and only stopped once he was within feet of her. He was too vivid to be a dream and the closer that he came, the more _real_ , she swallowed hard, but there was no where to go.

“My name is Bob,” hands were still palm up. “Just stay.”

“Please,” her voice pathetic even to her own ears. “Don’t…”

The “hurt me” part of that sentence never came. He was so focused on her and on approaching her, and she only saw him. Neither noticed the other presence fast encroaching. This other moved quickly, coming up from behind Bob. It blurred into the snow and, truth be told, even if Megan had been looking right at it not knowing what it was, it might have been easily dismissed as a trick of light and snow.

It moved quickly and went unnoticed. Its shape only clearly came into focus after it had stopped behind Bob. Within feet of Bob’s turned back, the unfocused nature began taking a definite _human_ appearance. This put it within Megan’s panic narrowed line of sight and she saw the dark, tall shape of it; although she couldn’t make out eyes or nose, her eyes couldn’t help but be fixed on it’s mouth. Its mouth was torn open in a grin, the teeth more like weapons than like any teeth she had ever seen before. It was hideous. Megan finally screamed.

She screamed until the world faded out around her.


End file.
